LARRY PYNN
Published on: June 17, 2016 |
Last Updated: June 17, 2016 5:06 PM PDT
A goose sporting a strange
collection of feathers is making for an odd duck in the West End.
The goose, sighted this week
in the company of Canada geese at Sunset Beach, features an unusual
pattern of white and darker feathers.
One theory is that it
is leucistic, a term that describes a pigment abnormality falling short of
albinism.
Another theory is that the bird
is a hybrid love child, perhaps the result of the union of a Canada
goose and a domestic goose or similar species.
“I don’t have much of a back
story,” Greg Hart, urban wildlife programs coordinator for the
Stanley Park Ecology Society, said Friday. “It’s just a neat bird that showed
up.”
He sees reports of similar birds
showing up in the region about once a year, each time sparking the leucistic-versus-hybrid
debate on bird forums. “Typically, field marks are what you use to identify
these birds,” he said. “This, of course, is displaying field marks that don’t
fit any bird. That’s the quandary.”
George Clulow, immediate past
president of B.C. Field Ornithologists, said that based on photos provided by
The Vancouver Sun, the bird may even have some DNA of a swan goose (a wild
species that breeds in China and Russia, but is also domesticated) or Asian
domestic goose.
“Upright posture, long neck, bill
colour/shape and foot colour are all suggestive of this to me,” he said. “Other
parent perhaps Canada goose.”
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